Libraries are so important to our individual communities. This was my primary thought as I finished a week of book repair workshops across North Carolina.

I began teaching book repair in 2004 with the North Carolina Preservation Consortium (NCPC). In 2004, I was involved with NCPC and had two training days at the Etherington Conservation Center, and was trained by Jemma’s Johnson’s Dad, Matt Johnson. I continued to teach for NCPC through 2016. At that time, I was contacted by Lauren Clossey, Continuing Education Consultant at the NC State Library, about teaching book repair for them. I’ve just finished a week of teaching for the NC State Library again, and it is always a very positive experience. Each year, I teach in the east, central and western part of North Carolina. This year I taught in Williamston, Pittsboro and Asheville.

Williamston is a small agricultural town (pop. 5,200), that, like many small towns in eastern North Carolina, once had a thriving population and downtown. Their library (Martin Memorial Library) is a nice little spot and that was where the workshop was held. The attendees were from surrounding counties (Washington, Bertie, Dare and Martin) and they were so much fun to teach.

Martin Memorial Library, Williamston, NC

In Asheville, I taught at the East Asheville Public Library. It is a modern building and is truly a community hub. It supports families and immigrants and has a very open and welcoming staff. It has an attached basketball court and the library lends basketballs. They also have a free wifi hub outside the building. I enjoyed teaching in this library very much.

East Asheville Public Library

My third workshop was in Pittsboro at the Chatham County Community Library. This is also a modern library with beautiful wood ceilings and high glass walls. There are a number of exhibits exploring and sometimes apologizing for its past.

Chatham Community Library, Pittsboro, NC

The attendee comments were very positive and made me feel the workshop was useful. Here are a few comments:
‘This was by far the best workshop I have ever been to’ and
‘On a scale of 1-10, it was an 11.’

I teach a variety of repairs: some repairs, we do together, and other repairs, I demonstrate for them.
I teach repairing a broken joint with Japanese tissue, where I show them how to tear, glue out and apply the tissue to a broken joint of a book.

A repaired joint using Japanese tissue

I also show attendees how to stabilize and fill voids on a photo or document using heat-set tissue. This is a thin tissue with a heat activated adhesive on one side. It is applied using a small iron.

Heat set tissue applied to the reverse side of a photograph.

A big part of the workshop is replacing a worn spine, and making a new spine using the old spine piece.

A replaced spine on an old book using the original spine

I crossed the state, met many people and spread the word for affordable book repair.

All of these libraries reminded me of how important a library is for each community. They are supporting their local community’s needs in many ways.